[LEDE-DEV] [OpenWrt-Devel] TR-069 for OpenWrt

[David Lang]

On Sat, 28 May 2016, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:

> On 05/27/2016 12:43 PM, David Lang wrote:
>> On Thu, 26 May 2016, Delbar Jos wrote:
>>
>>> We are conscious of the fact that together with the proposals made by
>>> Felix, Luka and Wojtek we are now looking at many "competing"
>>> proposals. As a next step, we recommend to organize a workshop, at a
>>> practical location and time, where we put everything on the table and
>>> define the most appropriate path forward to the benefit of OpenWrt as
>>> a whole.
>>
>> nothing wrong with supporting many different remote management daemons.
>>
>>> TR-069 is a complicated remote management system and in order to make
>>> this initiative a success, we must ensure that the complexity is
>>> handled in an elegant way and with respect for OpenWrt's core
>>> architecture. More than on the protocol itself, we believe that we
>>> should focus on the architectural enhancements required to support
>>> remote management in general.
>>
>> What is it that you think is needed to "support remote management in
>> general"?
>>
>> It's worth pointing out that many people are remotely managing OpenWRT
>> devices, Ansible/Salt/Puppet/Chef/etc are all common tools for the job.
>>
>> now, those are all tools aimed at managing Linux Servers, not networking
>> gear, but OpenWRT is a server.
>>
>> So I'd suggest starting off by creating a daemon that talks <your
>> protocol> and just stores the stuff it's sent in some simple files so
>> that it can return the info when queried.
>>
>> Once you have something that talks the network protocol correctly,
>> modifying it to change the real files, make uci calls, etc for different
>> distros is much easier (just write your daemon with the expectation that
>> the input and output details are going to change, so don't get fancy
>> with them).
>>
>> David Lang
>
> The TR-069 family is currently wildly used by ISPs controlling the (DSL)
> CPE devices of their customers. There are probably more than 100 million
> device controlled by standards from the TR-069 family out there.  When
> you get a DSL router from your ISP or buy one in the retail store it is
> very likely it supports the standards from the TR-069 family, as a
> vendor in this area you basically need support for this to sell your
> devices.

I wasn't questioning why it's useful to support TR-069. The only part I was 
questioning was the statement that OpenWRT needed work to make it support remote 
management.

There are already many tools to remotely manage/monitor OpenWRT

But that's why I'm saying that it seems like most of the work is in the protocol 
interface. If there is already a daemon that does the network protocol properly, 
that should make things very easy. If such a daemon needs to be written, that 
would be the place I would suggest that they focus. There are a lot of people 
who can do the plumbing work to make the daemon do the right thing on the 
system, who are not in a position to work on the network protocol side and make 
sure that it works properly with the management software.

David Lang